Coping with Grief

Coping with Grief

There are no set rules in coping with grief, it is a natural process and is experienced differently by everyone. Grief is a highly complex and personal experience. For a person who has lost their spouse or best friend, or the parent who loses their child, there is no way around grief. It is a difficult process, and it takes time. It can be deeply isolating, and while family and friends may try to help, it is impossible for them to fully understand what you are going through so try to be patient with those around you.

Grief is a healthy and natural reaction to a major loss. Although grief is important and eventually leads to emotional healing, it can be a prolonged and intensely painful experience. The Funeral Guide team offer our sincerest condolences and wish you well in your recovery, you are not alone.

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

adapted from origional prayer by: Reinhold Niebuhr

Quotes

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."

A. Sachs

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love."

Washington Irving

"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy."

eskimo proverb

"If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you've made me smile, the entire evening sky would be in the palm of my hand"

unknown

“Dear world, I am leaving you because I am bored. I am leaving you with your worries. Good luck."

George Sanders, suicide note 25 April 1972

"I wasted time, now doth time waste me"

William Shakespeare

“It was not frightening to die sometime, it was frightening to die right now.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, (cancer ward)

"What we have once enjoyed, we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes part of us."

Helen Keller

"Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain"

Author unknown

“His innings is over, his bat is laid down. Bowled out by deaths unerring ball.”

Unknown

"Walk tall as the trees; live strong as the mountains; be gentle as the spring winds, keep the warmth of summer in your heart, and the Great Spirit will always be with you."

anonymous, native American

"Tonight I feel so very small by the enormous loss of you"

Kate Shand

“After the game the king and the Pawn go into the same box.”

Italian saying

"If you live to one hundred, I want to live to one hundred minus one day - so I never live a day without you!"

Winnie the Pooh

“Life is like the desert, life the solitude, death joins us to the great majority”

Edward Young, 1683 –1765

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

Richard Bach, (Illusions)

"Tears are the words the heart can't express"

Author unknown

"Fly, fly little wing, fly beyond imagining. Past the planets and the stars, leave this lonely world of ours. Escape the sorrow and the pain. And fly again"

Celine Dion

"Life's a voyage that's homeward bound."

Herman Melville

“The idea is to die young as late as possible.”

Ashley Montagu, (1905 –1999)

"And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation"

Kahlil Gibran

Strive not, my soul, for an immortal life, but make the most of what is possible.”

Pythian Odes, 518 – 438BC

“Across the years I will walk with you - in deep green forests, on shores of sand and when our time on earth is through, in heaven too, you will have my hand!”

Robert Sexton

"And when I saw you sleeping, so peaceful and free from pain, I could not wish you back to suffer that again"